In the immortal words of the philosopher Socrates - "hell ya; get their monstrous asses."

A federal judge has allowed Multnomah County (Portland) to move forward with a lawsuit against fossil fuel companies in Oregon state court filed in response to the catastrophic (and deadly) 2021 heat dome event that claimed at least 69 lives in the county.

“This catastrophe was not caused by an act of God,” said Jeffrey B. Simon, a lawyer for the county, “but rather by several of the world’s largest energy companies playing God with the lives of innocent and vulnerable people by selling as much oil and gas as they could.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/07/11/news/not-caused-act-god-oregon-county-seeks-hold-fossil-fuel-companies-accountable

What makes this suit unique, and why I think it has real legs, is that the county is offering scientific evidence that runaway fossil fuel production and consumption, lead directly to a specific catastrophic event - the heat dome in 2021. This sort of preemptively shuts down some of the absolute nonsense we've seen fossil fuel companies use to shut down suits focused on longer-term, larger results of fossil fuel induced climate catastrophe - things like sea levels rising for example. In these suits the companies usually challenge by pointing to other factors outside their control that may also be contributing to the effects (even though we all know, the PRIMARY driver of climate catastrophe, is fossil fuel production and consumption and thus these companies are guilty as sin.) And from the sounds of it, the county has definitely brought the goods:

"Legal experts said the Oregon case is one of the first focused on public health costs related to high temperatures during a specific occurrence of the “heat dome effect.” Most of the other lawsuits seek damages more generally from such ongoing climate-related impacts as sea level rise, increased precipitation, intensifying extreme weather events and flooding.

Pat Parenteau, professor of law emeritus at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said that zeroing in on the heat and the heat dome effect are elements that might make the Multnomah case easier to prove.

“When it comes to the extreme heat events that affected Portland, the scientists concluded, in looking at that event and then looking at historical records of heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, it would not have happened, but for human-caused climate change,” Parenteau said.

“That’s actually the first time I’ve ever seen climate scientists state a conclusion like that in such absolute terms,” he added."

Furthermore, the county's case also focuses heavily on the emerging (and mountainous) body of evidence that demonstrates these fossil fuel companies not only knew what they were doing, and how harmful it was, but also engaged in active attempts to cover up, lie about, and mislead us all about what they were doing.

“We allege that this is just like any other kind of public health crisis and mass destruction of property that is caused by corporate wrongdoing,” said Simon, who is a partner in the law firm of Simon Greenstone Panatier. “We contend that these companies polluted the atmosphere with carbon from the burning of fossil fuels; that they foresaw that extreme environmental harm would be caused by it; that some of them, we contend, deliberately misled the public about that.”

The suit cites some of the internal correspondence by the companies, which Multnomah County officials said indicates that the industry was aware as far back as 1965 that pollution could have “catastrophic consequences.”

I can't predict the future, but I'm not at all exaggerating when I say this case brings me a lot of hope; if Multnomah County succeeds here (and they're claiming 1.5B dollars worth of damages) this might just be a way forward to force the courts to do what many of our governments won't do, but is absolutely necessary for preserving a world that can support 8B+ humans - shut down oil and gas companies, and stop fossil fuel production and consumption.

Of course, Americans in particular will know all of this presupposes fascist federal judges don't find a special uno-reverso card somewhere that gets their murderous corporate donors off the hook. In the meantime however, this case has real legs, and I for one think it provides some real hope. Lord knows the politicians owned by capital, even the fossil fuel companies themselves, aren't coming to our rescue. Thank the stars that there's still a few real human beings in office in Multnomah County.